Escaping Communist Public Life: Objects, Décors, Recollections
Escaping Communist Public Life: Objects, Décors, Recollections

Summary/Abstract: The baroque and the rococo are no longer mere artistic trends, they have survived their epochs as timeless states of mind, etiquettes, and generally as cultural habits. Consequently, in communist Romania, the private rococo was a failed attempt at the re-personalization of the individual. Crushed by the gigantism of the public baroque, the human being tried to escape, reconstructing a private universe, easy to control, though, because it was an imitational one. One could see it in every house one entered, its presence reinforcing each time the certitude that it stayed in fashion. The bibelot became, in this context, a family member.

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